ICMP reviews The Edge of Me
I love Twitter.
I love the discipline. I love the badass stuff. I love the pictures. It’s mostly original, mostly unmediated, and connects you with interesting people all over the planet. Twitter is how I stumbled on Kevin Sullivan.
Kevin works for the International Commission on Missing Persons (www.ic-mp.org)
They’re the only international organisation dedicated to people who have gone missing as a result of armed conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organised crime and other causes.
ICMP started in 1996 at the G-7 summit in Lyon, France on an initiative by Bill Clinton. The initial thrust was to look into as many as 40,000 people reported missing as a result of fighting in the Bosnian War. Their approach is inclusive rather than selective: they endeavour to work with all parties, with all stakeholders and agencies concerned, and because of this unique approach, they get results.
Their efforts in the former Yugoslavia have accounted for over 27,000 of the 40,000 people missing at the end of the conflict, the vast majority of the cases being in Bosnia and Herzegovina where over 30,000 people alone were reported missing.
They’re based in Sarajevo, but their work now takes them across the world: from dealing with the casualties of the Asian Tsunami, to investigating the ‘disappeared’ of Chile , to post-Gaddafi Libya.
I was interested in their work because in my story Sanda is missing, though she doesn’t know it yet. She is a victim and a survivor of the brutal conflict in the Balkans. There are still nearly 9000 people missing as a result of it.
Kevin and the Director-General of the ICMP, Kathryne Bomberger, were kind enough to take the time to read The Edge of Me and said this:
"The Edge of Me is an exciting tale of a young woman’s quest for truth and love. It examines the tragedy of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and describes in compelling detail the brutality of contemporary people-trafficking.
Readers will be drawn to the central character, a lively, sensitive and resilient teenager, and at the same time outraged by a persuasive account of cruelty that was perpetrated in Europe less than a generation ago – cruelty with which survivors continue to struggle today."
